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Category Archives: Life

Why do you practice martial arts? If it’s for fun, once you’ve achieved a good level of fun, why seek to get better? If it’s to win, why does winning matter? If it’s for artistic or personal mastery, why? Like getting caught into a conversation with the pedantic child who always asks “why?”, down the …

How do I help you? In this mire you rest But it is more that you wrest and struggle with stuck. I want for solutions To work you like a problem Solve you like a riddle Unscramble your Rubic’s Cube and set you in order But all I can do is sit In this dark …

You’re not too old to learn something new. Unless you plan to die in 10 years, there’s still plenty of time to gain a notable level of proficiency. Perhaps you won’t be leaping five feet into the air or out-competing some young competitor, but the benefits for your mind and body actually increase over time. …

Some weeks you’re in the groove. Some weeks you’re not. Tonight I’m feeling decidedly disconnected from the music. I feel like I’m astral projecting above my body as it moves to the rhythm of its own synth. I’m syncopating out of sync. Usually I would feel verklempt about this. Swimming in a frustration of non-connection; …

I am missing the woman I love. A friend has lost his son. My cheeks are sticky from my small sorrow. I lament not feeling her touch, smelling her hair, tasting her breath alongside mine. A man has lost his son. What is the measure of my small grief? Alongside one so large. Soon I …

In my coaching practice, one of the core life skills I help people with is learning to budget. I do this both on an entrepreneurial level, to help people who are running new businesses establish healthy money management habits, and I also help individuals on a personal level. For many when we think of budgeting …

I have done many things in my life that didn’t work out. I have found myself on adventures of which I had imagined fantastic and romantic ends that never came to be. Many of these adventures had their fair share of pain and hardship. Yet I don’t regret these adventures, in that I don’t regret …

I revisit the question “Why do swordplay?” on a regular basis. Many people ask me what my reason is for practising something that is arguably esoteric and a few centuries past its true usefulness. The answer may not be what people are expecting. At the end of the day, I feel that hundreds of years …

I don’t usually share other links on my blog as the purpose for me has been to express my own thoughts, ideas, and feelings; To challenge myself to present myself in the world in a bold and vulnerable way and not perhaps hide behind the easy sharing of others’ ideas. Yet tonight when I sat …

It’s easy to put expectation on a moment as it happens. To be in a connection and start asking questions “What does this mean?”, “How should I act here?”, “What’s expected of me?”. To retreat into our minds. Into the ticker tape behind our eyes. It’s perhaps a necessary part of our path of growth …